Open access research monographs

We recently looked at trends in the publication of open access research, as part of our ongoing exploration of the issues around open science and open access.

A new report looks at policies, funding, and publishing in regard to open access (OA) research monographs in eight European countries: Denmark, Finland, Germany, France, Netherlands, United Kingdom, Norway. and Austria.

Research monographs are defined as: “A long, academic and peer reviewed work on a single topic normally written by a single author, and extended to also include peer reviewed edited collections by multiple authors.”

Overall observations

• The report authors are cautiously optimistic about the prospects for a significant amount of European long-form scholarship to be published as OA, despite well-known obstacles.

• There is substantial funding that could be re-routed in various ways to pay for the publishing of books more efficiently, although it is recognised that this involves complex operational changes.

• Countries in the study are similar in many ways, however, there are huge differences in population size, book markets, OA policies, funding streams, and publishers’ approaches to OA.

• No single model will fit all and there is no scenario for a perfect transition. Indeed, it is not expected that all monographs will go OA, but there are a number of ways in which OA for books can be encouraged further.

• Monograph sales are steadily declining, destabilising academic book publishers, raising barriers for early career authors, undermining the monograph as a valuable form of scholarly output and thereby reducing scholars’ choice of output.

• Academic book publishers in many continental countries continue to rely on “print” subsidies from public and private funds that could in theory be rechanneled to pay for OA publishing.

• Successful pure OA monograph publishing initiatives in various countries are demonstrating clear benefits, though scaling will require further support.

• OA for monographs is becoming an accepted publication model, offered by leading book publishers. Authors are increasingly becoming aware of the benefits of increased exposure.

Article source: A landscape study on open access and monographs is licenced by CC BY 4.0.